Newsletter 2 - Other people's anxiety/setting targets

Dealing with other people's anxiety

At this time of year and with the changes in the global context, you may find that members of your team are getting anxious. People may show their anxiety by working extra hard, by getting bad-tempered more easily, by being tired from lack of sleep.

How can you deal with that, and help your staff to refocus?

One important strategy is to be sure that their work is satisfying to them as far as possible. Achievable goals, good feedback, pleasant relationships with their colleagues are all helpful.

You may feel that it's not your business to look after the emotions of your staff. In the end it's worthwhile because their emotions can affect their output, which certainly is your business.

Setting targets

I've had a few questions about setting targets. In some case targets for your staff are cascaded down to them from your own targets, which may indeed come from the targets of the manager that you report to. In other cases, you have to set them yourself.

The old abbreviation of SMART can be a good reminder.

Smart targets are Specific, Manageable, Appropriate, Recognisable, and Timely. (I know, there are other versions!)

What this means is that they need to be written in such a way that a person knows very clearly what they need to do to succeed and what success will look like: and that the targets are easy to understand, can actually be achieved (and achieved without undue stress) and generally make sense.

It needs to be clear what has to be done by when ie. the time-frame. When you are setting targets for staff, you need to be aware that in some cases, their success depends on other people, not just on their own efforts.

January 2009

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